The phrases “moral majority” and “silent majority” are associated in American political history with Jerry Falwell and Richard Nixon, respectively, who seem unlikely to be heroes of the Sunrise Movement, a leftist project that uses children to emotionally blackmail adults who agree with its climate action agenda. Yet when the Sunrise Movement recently confronted Dianne Feinstein to press her to sponsor Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s extreme Green New Deal, and shot a video of the exchange calibrated to go viral, it deployed the rhetoric of a silent moral majority exactly.

Feinstein pointed out that she legitimately represents an actual majority of her state, which elected her in a landslide. “I’ve gotten elected. I just ran. I was elected by almost a million vote plurality,” she patiently explained. But the activists’ leader didn’t see it that way, protesting inaccurately that “there is enormous popularity for this bill around the whole country.” Later: “Your constituents are asking you for this, and I really believe, and tens of thousands — millions — of people around the country are asking for this online.” Tens of thousands, millions … What’s the difference, when you’re making it up?